Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

DOIs should be the last element in a citation irrespective of the format used. The DOI citation should begin with "doi:" in lowercase followed by the DOI with no spaces between the ":" and the DOI.

doi:10.5284/1000022

DOIs can also be cited as a persistent link from another Web page. This is done by appending the DOI Resolver with the DOI. This would look like:

http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1000022

However, if it is possible it is best to hide the URL in the href property of the <a> tag and have the link text be of the form doi:10.5284/1000022. The HTML for this would look like:

Interactive Map:

ArcIMS is slowly being abandoned by ESRI, so maintenance of the ArcIMS maps is becoming extremely difficult. We have decided to migrate this map interface to a more sustainable software stack using non-proprietary software. We will begin the migration to GeoServer and OpenLayers as soon as possible, but until then we apologise for any inconvenience.

Help for using the Interactive Map

An Interactive Map has been provided to enable you to examine the various spatial data compiled throughout the survey using basic WebGIS tools. To begin using the map click the button labelled 'Switch On' found in the box above.

Groups/Layers:

Each map contains several layers grouped under the following headings:

Archaeology

Plan Elements

Metrics

Survey Data

Base Map

Layers can be selected either singularly or as a group. Toggling the group visibility icon will display/hide every layer featured within the specific group. To display a single layer within a group, the group must be opened and the relevant layer can then be enabled/disabled by selecting the layer visibility icon . However, only one Base Map layer can be displayed at any one time.

A layer can be made active be either clicking the relevant radio button or by clicking the layer title. The layer will become highlighted when it is active.

The Group/Layer panel can be hidden by clicking on the vertical grey button marked with an arrow. The arrow button will slide toward the left of the map area and the map will be re-rendered filling the whole area. Clicking the arrow button again will show the Layer/Group panel. When the Layer/Group panel is hidden/shown the active tool will be deselected.

The various tools found in the tool panel on the right of the map allow a further element of interactivity. There is a handy text tip next to each button on the interface to explain what each button is for, but on this page we go into a little bit more detail:

Zoom in - Click on the map to zoom in (the map will be centred on your mouse click).

Zoom out - Click on the map to zoom out (the map will be centred on your mouse click).

Zoom to full extent - Zoom to the extent of all the layers within the map - this is a quick way of getting back to the map's starting position

Pan - Click on the map and drag it in any direction to change the area of view.

Identify - Click on a feature on the active layer to see the data attached to it. The data will appear in a popup window.

Rectangle select - Use your mouse to draw a rectangle on the screen to select a group of features within the active layer. The associated data from these features will be displayed in a popup window and the selected features will be highlighted.

Clear selection - If you have any features selected/highlighted, this tool will unselect them.

Show legend - Show a map legend of archaeological features in a popup window. Point data and basemap information is omitted.

Be patient! Every time you zoom, pan, refresh or query the map, a request is sent to the server and new image is created and delivered to your desktop. Whilst this request is being sent, do not try and send extra requests as this will produce error messages. Your browser can only send and receive one GIS request at a time so don't push it!

Discussion:

Early history of the town

Cricieth stands on the south side of Pen Llýn, overlooking Tremadoc Bay, and facing across the water to Harlech in the distance. As well as their proximity and similar geographical positions there are some historical parallels between Edward's new towns of Cricieth and Harlech. Both received their borough charters on the same day, November 22 1284, their charters both being modeled on Conwy's, and both were relatively small boroughs without defences but with castles.[174] In the case of Cricieth though, the castle was not an English foundation but was of Welsh origin. It is mentioned first in 1239, and between 1259 and 1282 was held by Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, after which time the castle was in English hands, certainly by March 1283.[175] Arnold Taylor suggests the castle needed repairing at this time following slighting by the Welsh as they left it to Edward's forces, the cost perhaps being fairly small at around £500.[176]

It is possible that there was already a settlement established outside the Welsh castle before its capture by the English. Edward Lewis notes that 'the promise of a grant of sixty acres of land apiece had been held out to induce burgesses to settle around the castle', and that 'the nuclei of their borough lands were those pertaining to the maenor of Cricieth'.[177] It has also been suggested that St Catherine's church, situated a little distance away from Edward's new town, had an earlier, Welsh dedication.[178] The borough charter of November 1284 followed soon after the work carried out repairing the castle during 1283, and so the likelihood is that the new town was established some time late on in 1283, or early 1284. The borough was small. In the mid 1290s there were more soldiers in the castle than burgesses in the town. Nine burgesses are recorded at this time, though 'three of whom subsequently left', giving a total number of 71 inhabitants living there.[179] Surviving court and account rolls of the early 1300s reveal the early development of the new town.[180] In 1309 211/3 burgages were yielding 21s 4d in rent per year, rising to nearly 26 burgages by 1345, the maximum number recorded prior to the Black Death.[181] The burgesses held not only their burgages but also surrounding farm-land. In 1309 81 acres of arable land yielded 1d an acre.[182] The town's market also raised income for the king. It was held every week on a Thursday, but the tolls it generated were low, only 10d in 1326.[183] These early records reveal that the burgages in Cricieth were measured out to dimensions of 80 by 60 feet, the same size as Caernarfon's.[184] The rented areas of the town's arable fields were measured using the statute perch of 16½ feet, however.[185] The records are silent on who in Edward's entourage had come to Cricieth to set out the new town and measure its burgages to such precise dimensions.

The design and plan of the town

The castle sits on a knoll between the town and the sea, immediately overlooking the town's small, square-shaped market place. The layout of Cricieth is simple. It is based on a parallel street-system joined at the highest point in the middle by the market place, the whole plan forming an overall H-shape. One of these streets has evidently disappeared. Its course is preserved in plot and field boundaries shown by eighteenth and nineteenth century maps. The telling sign is the way that plots north of Castle Street are double the depth of those elsewhere in the town, and have running across them, midway along their length, a boundary that aligns with the north-east corner of the market square and falls on the same alignment as Lôn Bach ('little lane'). This 'lost' street thus ran east from the market and parallel to Castle Street. Building plots were strung out along these two streets, but probably not on Castle Street's southern (ie. castle) side, where a ditch has been suggested by the RCAHMW.[186] Field measurements have revealed that some of the plots shown by the first edition Ordnance Survey plan still retain their original 80 by 40 foot dimensions.[187] The plot patterns in the town are thus probably indicative of their thirteenth-century form. The stipulated standard burgage-size shows that care was taken over measuring out the town at the time of its foundation, and that there was concern over having regularity in the town's plot-layout. However, the streets are gently curving, sandwiching the town between the castle and the rocky outcrop of Dinas to the north. The parallel streets could easily have accommodated the 25 or so burgages that were being rented during the early 1300s, and so it looks as if the streets were planned to hold more plots than were actually occupied.

Who designed the town is not easy to determine since the documentation relating to the rebuilding of the castle offers few clues. From March 1283 the constable in charge of Cricieth - both town and castle - was Henry of Greenford, who a few months earlier had been at Rhuddlan.[188] He may have played a role in overseeing initial work at Cricieth during the period leading up to the chartering of the new town in November 1284. As 'a works officer' of the royal household, Greenford had also been present at Denbigh in 1282, during initial work there, and subsequently, 'when the court was in France and Gascony in 1286-7' he 'went ahead to make the advance arrangements for the king's accommodation', in both Paris and Bordeaux.[189] William of Leybourne, the castle's second constable, arrived by early 1285, seemingly too late to have had an influence in planning the town.[190] The layout of Cricieth offers few clues either. Its parallel street-pattern is not matched by any other Edwardian new towns in north Wales, though of course the size of its burgages - 60 by 80 feet - is shared by Caernarfon, and its charter was granted in September 1284, just a few months prior to Cricieth's.[191] There is the possibility, therefore, that whoever made decisions on the plot layout at Caernarfon was also influential at Cricieth. If so, clearly they did not employ Caernarfon's grid-plan of regular-sized street blocks, opting instead for a simpler layout, perhaps more fitting for a smaller town in a relatively remote position.

The town as it is today

Cricieth is today a small seaside town with a holiday atmosphere. The castle ruins remain. The original street pattern and some of the original plots still survive in the modern urban landscape, though the market square is now residential. Some buildings are of sixteenth or seventeenth century construction, particularly along Castle Street.[192] Along the north side of Lôn Bach are some substantial stone-built property boundaries. The town was much extended in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with new built-up areas, and while the population of Cricieth in 2001 stood at around 1800 inhabitants, this figure swells each year in the summer with the arrival of holiday-makers.